These are two solo albums packaged as a double disc from a group (Outkast).
Will there be problems? I can see a potential one with Andre’s Hey Ya taking off. What if Big Boi isn’t as successful?
Oops. Wrong forum.
That’d be too bad.
Having moved this puppy on over to the société du café, I will add that I don’t see what problem could be caused by half of the double album being more successful than the other half. Or are you thinking of Tupac Shakur vs. Notorious BIG level problems?
So far all the radio stations here in Miami (as well as MTV, MTV2, and BET) are playing the hell out of Big Boi’s “I Love The Way You Move,” but I’m not hearing Andre’s “Hey Ya” get much airplay at all.
It’s clear they wanted to move in different musical directions without actually breaking up, so I doubt this’ll cause a rift between them either way. Besides, it’s not like you can choose to buy one album or another.
While around here in Connecticut, I hear “Hey Ya” constantly on the pop/top 40 station, and the “I Love the Way You Move” is only on the R&B station.
Didn’t KISS do it first? With four solo albums, no less.
And their version of “Hey Ya!” is a lot better, if you ask me.
Shake it like a polaroid picture!
Read an interview recently from Dre3k and he stated that this was his last rap album, and that he wanted to go study music and that (paraphrasing) “next time you saw him, he’s going to be in a band”.
I hope it works out better for him than when Billy Joel decided to forsake Pop and compose only classical music.
Well there are a lot of benefits to doing it this way. Since they’ve packaged it as an Outkast CD, neither of them will have to feel shitty seeing the other’s do better. If this CD won a grammy, “Outcast” would win, and so neither one of them would be left behind. They get to market it as Outkast and keep it in the Outkast slot at the record store, and the price is lower than they would have been as two individual packages, so that’s cool for me, the person with the one CD a month rule. For some reason though, I can picture them coming out as seperate packages later and this being the special edition.
I will say one thing. I got this CD and it had a little insert under the shrinkwrap to say the title since the CD artwork doesn’t have the title on it. Normally these inserts are just laid over the cd case and then shrinkwraped in place, but this one was gooped on with that goopy glue that’s supposed to pull right off except for some reason, the glue did not pull off the CD case. So I have a double CD that has this stupid snotty glue stuck all over it and lint from all over the world has flown in special just to stick to it already. I’d swap it for another CD case but it’s a double and I don’t have one. So nuts to that.
I’ve been told that WD-40 gets that right off, pokey, although I’ve never tried it.
Not really the same thing at all, but CCR’s last studio album, Mardi Gras, went in a similar direction. Previously, all CCR’s original songs (with maybe one of two early exceptions) were written by John Fogerty, who was also the lead vocalist. Prior to Mardi Gras, Cosmo Clifford and Stu Cook wanted a greater hand in creating the band’s sound (and Tom Fogerty left the band for this reason). So John said Cook and Clifford should each write a couple songs of their own – and sing lead. While Mardi Gras is a very different album from CCR’s other work (and a lot of people don’t like it), I think it’s very interesting (and Clifford & Cook’s Need Someone to Hold is a very, very touching song).
–Cliffy
The Melvins aped Kiss with three solo albums.
Haven’t you seen the video? He can already like 5 instruments! 
Did the members of Kiss do 4 solo albums or was it a Kiss quadruple disc-- sold as a Kiss album? (Same thing with the Melvins)
The Kiss albums were four separate solo albums, not a Kiss Box Set.
“I Like the Way You Move” and “Hey Ya!” are getting about equal airplay here, but it will be interesting to watch what happens once those two singles have been worn out. I wonder if the other songs that get played will be drawn equally from Speakerboxx and The Love Below, or if one will come out on top. Personally, I am completely in LOVE with The Love Below, to the point of listening to it non-stop all day at work (I love headphones).
Like pokey said, this is still an Outkast album, even though it’s split, so I don’t see the potential for warring factions of Outkast. This was just a completely great way to let Andre 3000 and Big Boi explore their own musical styles without being hampered by the other. I mean, when they work together, they’re phenomenal, but it’s neat hearing from them separately, too. I’m assuming they’ll be back to recording together again for the next album. We’ll see.
We should remember, too, that though they were billed as two single albums, each contributes to the other half. Some of the best songs on Speakerboxxx are produced by Andre, and Big Boi has a few raps on The Love Below, which really adds to the sound.